(photos)

These are the only photos that have come from my camera in the last.... year? that I've felt a connection to. I want to get back into my art, but it's been very difficult. I just haven't felt a passion for it, or a personal connection to anything I've photographed. I don't think that it's something you can push.

Jenny Saville

I recently discovered these works by artist Jenny Saville, an English painter born in 1970. Of the works I found, these are my favored pieces, though she has some explicit and intriguing nude portraits of women & transsexuals that are worth a look as well.

Since her debut in 1992, Saville's focus has remained on the female body, slightly deviating into subjects with "floating or indeterminant gender painting large scale paintings of transsexuals and transvestites. Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients. Her painting Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face) appeared on the cover of Manic Street Preachers' third album, The Holy Bible. Further to this, Stare (2005) features as the cover of the ninth Manic Street Preachers album Journal For Plague Lovers (May 2009). Saville works and lives in Sicily, and is a tutor of figure painting at the Slade School of Art.

Cy Twombly

I read about Cy Twombly's current exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in this month's issue of Elle Decor. Unfortunately I could find only a thumbnail of the image that accompanied the blurb, which is an untitled piece from 2001 and is what sparked my interest in the artist. I poked around and found some additional works of inspiration.

Cy Twombly (born April 25, 1928) is an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors.

Twombly is best known for blurring the line between drawing and painting. Many of his best-known paintings of the late 1960s are reminiscent of a school blackboard on which someone has practiced cursive e's—or (for his paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s), perhaps, hundreds of years of bathroom graffiti. Twombly had at this point discarded painting figurative, representational subject-matter, citing the line or smudge—each mark with its own history—as its proper subject.

Nicola's Iris, 1991


Proteus, 1984

“Cy Twombly’s distinctive canvases merge drawing, painting, and symbolic gesture in the pursuit of a direct, intuitive form of expression. Twombly’s paintings—florid evocations offering homage to art, myth, and allegory—are a form of improvisational writing. More performative than illustrative, Twombly’s inimitable visual language of scribbles, scratches, and scrawls are employed to both suggestive and sublime effects.”

Untitled, 2007


The Rose (IV), 2008


Wilder Shores of Love, 1985

Is it any surprise that of his vast, decade-spanning collection of works, the florals are my favorites?

art:Dick Phillips

During my vacation in Arizona last month, I took a day trip to Sedona and made a pit-stop in Jerome, a teeny-tiny town on top of a very big and very steep hill. The touristy town is the perfect mid-destination point among the rolling hills and winding mountains en route from Phoenix to Sedona and the Grand Canyon. There are many shops and restaurants to choose from, and the turquoise jewelry is abundant (and you know that's the real reason I wanted to stop there!) There are multiple art galleries which showcase more than just the local hobbyist's works - these places house LEGIT art of varying mediums.

I came across the abstract acrylic paintings of Dick Phillips at the Raku Gallery. (He's also featured at the Duely Jones gallery in Scotsdale.) I almost couldn't bear leaving without one, though they're all approx. 4 ft x 4 ft in size and range from $1,000-$3,000 in price. I seldom find art that portrays color in the way that I see it, or in inspirational compositions. To be honest, I'm bored by most fine art and am appealed to more graphic forms. This artist's explosions of color on canvas triggered a connection to the art that I don't usually attain. The vibrant expression and movement in Dick Phillips' work impressed me so much that I spent at least an hour of the remaining car ride to Sedona in an uncomfortably cramped backseat trying to pick up signals on my Blackberry so I could Google him. I managed to find the following bio. Oh, and dude is in his 70's. Even more impressive.

DICK PHILLIPS is a native of Breckenridge, Texas and a graduate of Texas A & M University. He has conducted numerous workshops thoughtout the United States, England and Mexico. Mr. Phillips has continually taught drawing and painting since 1972. Previous studies have been with such noted painters as Milford Zornes and Robert E. Wood. Mr. Phillips has had thirty-nine One Man Exibitions and has exhibited in over one hundred juried shows across the United States. He is listed in Who's Who in American Art.


Dick Phillips has taught watercolor classes in the Valley for many years, while exhibiting his acrylic abstract landscapes in galleries around the country. His most recent body of work are abstract floral paintings, in which he fuses his two different styles in an explosion of vivid color and fluidity.

Intermezzo


Anthem


Eureka


Occasionally


Utopia


Going for the Gold


Ocher


Finale


Sonorian Rhapsody


Django Reinhardt's Blue Note